The Rookie Road Trip has been one of the craziest and coolest experiences of my life! Driving across America with my fellow Rookies as we met readers and saw all the parts of the country I have never seen before was awesome. Now we're in LA, setting up for the Space 15 Twenty installation. Before I close the curtain on the Rookie Road Trip, here's a list of some of my favorite parts of the trip:

Meeting Rookie readers!

Tavi is used to having fans, but I was amazed at how devoted the Rookie fans are. We liked to joke that Rookie meet-ups were like little cults, with Tavi as the leader, but there's actually a bit of truth to that. Meeting the people from the internet who were responsible for all the post comments, reblogs, and overall Rookie love was so nice!

The best is when girls met up in cities and became friends! Rookie readers are always asking, "Where are the other girls who read Rookie in my town?" Now they know! Emails and Tumblr URLs were exchanged aplenty!

They were also crazy stylish.

Cute Tank Girl/Bikini Kill jacket in San Francisco!

SO MANY READERS

Teen fashion designer Jane Round from Omaha was so sweet! Petra had her model for one of the UO lookbooks.

This headpiece from Portland is still blowing my mind

I loved Eryn, the girl we kidnapped in Seattle to take out to dinner because she was staying in the same hotel as us! Coolest girl ever.

Eating Voodoo Doughnuts

I don't care if I sound touristy, these were so good. So, SO good. We got Olivia and Cooper's family a big box of them as a gift for letting us stay at their house, but I think the Rookie crew kind of ended up eating them during the course of our stay. I have literally thought about Voodoo Doughnuts EVERY DAY since leaving Portland. I'm obsessed.

All The Unexpected Stops

Sometimes we would go off the itinerary to stop in an unexpected place and break up the extremely long car rides we had to endure during the trip. Whether we were stopping at some Midwestern gas station that (for some reason) sold katanas or picking daisies on a Big Sur cliff, all of it was so fun.

Carey, Ohio was surprisingly fun because we pretty much bought out the entire shrine shop and Petra got to shoot some creepy photos there.

Over the course of this trip, we have made so many banners, zines, and flower crowns. You think we would be sick of it by now, but we're not. Flowers, glitter glue, and assorted gems will always get us excited. Also, it was fun to see what readers came up with each time! All of it was beautiful: the crowns covered in babies, the Bieber-themed zines, and the vulgar pennant banners.

Tavi's ladylike banner

Riding go-karts against our readers in Boulder!

Tavi and I had a competitive (maybe a little, uh, too competitive?) spirit but, alas, we lost. Big time. Losing was still fun though!

Photo by Tavi

Getting presents!

Sometimes Rookie meet-ups felt like birthday parties for the staff because we got so many gifts! Readers came bearing hand made clothing, personalized mix CDs for the van, their artwork and more! They also brought us a lot of things for the shrine at the installation, so the show at Space 15 Twenty will have props and pieces given to us by readers!

NEWSFLASH: The United States of America is totally pretty. I have proof:

I took this on an old vintage camera I have called "Instagram"

Who knew?!

And there you have it: a few highlights from the Rookie Road Trip. American readers got to meet Rookie staff in the flesh and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did! For more on each city, creep back through my blog archives here under the Rookie Road Trip tag!